Off the Center of My Universe
by yllimilly
Summary: Malik settles next to her, twisting away from her slightly so that they don't feel like they're in each other's personal space too much. "I can't become someone else. People don't change, Shizuka."


**off the center of my universe**

_._

_Crying_-

Crying is not pretty. Crying is _messy_. It involves bloating, swelling, stinging, uncontrollable tremors, blurry vision, leaking of every orifice and it invariably ends, if done thoroughly, in a lingering migraine, a brain drought, a heavy sensation in the head. Crying is deeply theatrical in nature because it takes place within well established boundaries; crying is not a flood of tears, a deluge, a release. We monitor the pitch and the loudness of our cries, the tempo of our sniffles, of our blinking, of our breathing. Crying is cathartic because it is shameful.

Shizuka knows this.

So when she stumbles upon Isis and Rishid Ishtar in the hallway of the Domino Mental Health Institute she finds enough resolve to cast aside her stupor and simply nods, which is an oddly inappropriate greeting after three years of mutual, tacit avoidance. Then, when the sorrowful pair is past her, _then_ she takes in the brief vision of Isis's tired face, the dark creases under her bloodshot eyes, and Rishid's solemn, downcast gaze.

"I'm going to have to inspect that, Miss." The voice belongs to a male employee guarding the first of a set of fortified doors.

"Of course."

She hands him the duffel bag - her mother's - and he starts picking and choosing, sorting out what's going in, and what's not. She watches him handling the lingerie items and the little jars with a dignity you might not expect to see in someone for whom this is a customary task. What remains inside the bag clinks and shines; what can go in has been placed in a heavy duty garbage bag.

"You'll bring that bag back to me. You can come and pick up the duffel bag when you leave. Visitor hours are over at eight forty five."

Shizuka gives a hesitant glance at the rejected contents. She's spent forty five minute looking and folding and packing the objects on the list her mother had given her, and it was half in vain.

"She really wants the nail polish," she begins. "I can stay there and watch while she puts it on."

The man shakes his head slightly. "It's also a sanitation issue. I'm sorry."

She doesn't question the statement; she'll make up time later in her schedule to mull it over. A glance at the clock tells her exactly twenty five minutes remain. The man extends his arm expectantly.

Shizuka hands him the duffel bag and he sets up to unlock the doors while she thinks of a way to soften the blow of deception.

Once she is in, the bag is double-checked by a nurse. Then Shizuka beelines for her mother's room, not eager to take in the bleak surroundings, but also not wanting to peek at her mother's roommates, to invade their intimacy. It's more than 'not staring', it's a matter of leave those less fortunate than her in peace. They aren't here by choice. They're here because here is the only place that can accommodate them at the moment.

Her mother is sitting by the bed, as if she'd been waiting for her daughter all day.

"I forgot the nail polish," Shizuka lies, ripping off the figurative band-aid in one pull.

Her mother is surprisingly okay with it. The daughter sits on the bed next to her mother, and they chat idly about the contents of whatever magazines have been made available to the matriarch. The conversation is surprisingly light and bearable, given the place and the context.

But Shizuka can't pay attention.

Her mind is elsewhere.

She thinks of Isis Ishtar. She wonders when and where she cried. Here, no doubt. In one of those rooms. Was she just discharged? Shizuka can't imagine Isis requiring those kinds of treatments. This aisle isn't for the dying, or the violent, or those occasionally wallowing in paralyzing existential crises. This aisle is a sort of a buffer between being functional and being irrevocably useless, a transition for travel agents so burnt out they can't even muster the energy needed to pour themselves a bowl of cereal. People like her mother, in short.

"Right? Shizuka, you're not listening," her mother complains, chipping off some of the fading nail polish.

Shizuka musters a smile. "Oh, it's just that I have midterms and papers due this week. It's hard for me to concentrate on pretty much anything that isn't school," she explains bashfully.

Her mother's lips resume their frenetic movements and then it occurs to Shizuka that Malik might be _here_.

In one of those rooms.

That would make... That would make sense.

She reminisces the ugliness of his other self and shivers. Who knows if he's resurfaced, if he hadn't been completely wiped out, if he was reborn, perpetually haunting the heir of the clan and those who are cursed enough to be around him...

Suddenly she doesn't feel so safe anymore, and fears for her mother, in turn.

A female nurse walks by, gently reminding her that her time will be over in less than five minutes, so Shizuka cuts short their one-way conversation on the possibility of growing pickling cucumbers by the windowsill like they show in Home and Garden. She informs her mother that she needs to take the bag back and that they should put her stuff away now rather than wait until the last minute and have to throw everything on the bed in a hurry, undoing all the nice folding on which she'd spend some of her own time - the precious time she could've been spending on attending the cheerleading practice until the end, or on reviewing the molecular processes involved in fatty acid oxidation.

Time is up.

A nurse lightly knocks on each door frame, walking rapidly from one room to another.

Emerging footsteps in the hallway behind.

Mother and daughter, caught in an earnest embrace.

"I'll be out soon," the mother says. It's the first mention of her current state in the last half hour. Shizuka sighs in relief.

"It's going to be alright."

And they part.

Other families, colleagues, friends, unhurriedly flock to the exit. Some of them are accompanied by their captive loved ones. Shizuka and her mother prefer clean goodbyes; the girl walks alone. But she can't get Malik off her mind, and something makes her pulse race; she must _know_. On a whim she walks by every room, giving in the urge to indeed peek into those not so private lives, in hopes of seeing, or not seeing the blond boy who liked gold jewelry and motorcycles. She doesn't know what she'll do once she knows he is or isn't here, but chooses to vanish that nagging thought. It is beside the point.

Some rooms are empty. Some rooms have obviously not been graced the presence of a visitor. Shizuka's stomach clenches; she could have taken five more minutes of her time to drop by and say hello, connect with those lonesome souls...

And then Malik Ishtar.

Or a pale imitation of who he once was, of who he still is in her mind's eye. She can't reconcile the two.

It has to be him, lean and delicate, laying on his side in the middle of his too large bed, hugging his knees and facing the wall opposite the one Shizuka is peeking from. His bare arms seem marred in places, sharp peaks appear in his lilac shirt where his shoulder blades should be.

There is no room for fear in her heart right now.

She swallows then looks away, then looks again, opens her mouth, closes it, turns on her heel and leaves.

It is dark out, and a chill washes over the little hairs on her exposed arms. The sparse contents of the duffel bag shake and stir, clinging like the bell she carried in her trekking trip, to scare away the bears luring in the wild. She clutches to the gently worn handles of the bag.

The empty apartment was waiting for her like an indifferent cat, purring at her master's legs only to beg for food. Three weeks is a long time. Not that her mother's never been away; she's had to travel, or had the opportunity to, in her line of work. And it was always at the other end of the world, and there were always gifts on the way back. It's strange but now that her mother's right in this town, her absence feels sort of wrong. Especially now that Shizuka is stacking away all the cold creams, disposable razors, mascaras and nylon stockings that can't be put to good use by their owner, stuck using communal bathrooms and showers for at least another week.

Shizuka doesn't sleep well that night.

She thinks of Malik Ishtar all day, all week, trying to reminisce what he's done, who he was, who he might have become under different circumstances. It sort of affects her grades; her TA comes to see her in private when handing her midterm back, asking her if she'd like to do the make-up. It's sort of distressing to see one's best student do below average, she says indirectly. Shizuka declines; she can make it up with her labs and assignments, and wouldn't have time to sit through the make-up anyway. Her schedule is so tightly regulated. She wouldn't even have time for a boyfriend.

When she joins her brother and his friends at the ritual DM tournament on the first Thursday evening of the month, she timidly asks about the former leader of the Rare Hunters.

"Malik? I don't know, I thought they were back in Egypt," Honda says to break the uncomfortable silence.

Jonouchi simply glares at his deck. Yuugi glances left and right uncomfortably. "...I wonder how they are doing," he risks idly.

Shizuka judges it best not to share whatever little piece of info she has. She comes second after her brother, and gives away some of her prize cards to the young kid she beat 3-0 in the first round.

And when she comes back home, she thinks that she's almost gotten used to this life, that she almost regrets that her mother is coming back the next day, because it is lonely but oh so peaceful without the woman's mood swings, her soap operas pumped at full volume, the panicked phone calls in the middle of the nights from unexpectedly homeless clients whose room hadn't been booked properly with the wholesaler.

She barely sleeps at all that night, lying flat out on her back because whenever she tips onto her side her knees creep up to her chest as if on their own accord and it reminds her of the ghost of Malik Ishtar.

The next day she comes home after her last lecture, skipping on cheerleading altogether. She takes out the fancy salmon appies from the freezer and stocks them in a sink full of cold water to thaw out. She also opens a bottle of red and sets the good cheese at room temperature. She checks that there are still candles in the cupboards and makes a mental note to get chocolate truffles on the way. There's no harm in letting her mother see them in advance, it won't spoil the surprise too much. She flings the empty duffel bag over her shoulder and walks to the hospital, hopping as she crosses the street, avoiding the cracks on the sidewalk.

When she takes the pretty chocolate box out of the bag for the staff to hold while she is inside she is told that it is okay and she blinks.

"Thank you."

"If she doesn't eat it right away you'll have to bring it back, though," and Shizuka is okay with that, because those are for dessert anyway.

When the doors unlock for her and swallow her in she is greeted with a tight lipped female nurse who motions for her to come and have a private word with her.

"She hasn't been feeling so well today."

Shizuka's heart jumps. "Can I still see her?"

"Yes. But she won't be discharged tonight as planned. We'll have to keep her a few more days."

Shizuka's heart lands on the concrete with a splattering wet noise. Metaphorically.

_Downtrodden_ is the word that can best describe her state.

Her feet take her to her mother's room. The petite woman is sitting on her bed, hunched over, facing the wall... opposing...

"Mom." She takes the chocolates out, drops the duffel bag at her feet, by the wall, next to the doorframe.

"I want to be alone."

Shizuka's shoulders sag. She risks a step forward -

"I don't want you to see me like this."

"I _miss_ you Mom-"

It was stupid and earnest and regrettably spontaneous and Shizuka isn't feeling too emotionally sturdy and she's had a long, tiring week with too many midterms and too little sleep, so of course her voice has to start shaking and her mom yells and someone wearing a badge quickly walks to the room to assess the situation and Shizuka steps back and leans on the wall for a moment, aware that the sight of a person crying isn't the healthiest one for mentally the vulnerable people around her but she has to sort of get a grip before she can walk up shoulders back, head held up high, the soles of her ballerina shoes clicking smartly on the white tiles of the hospital floor, giving her confidence and making her feel like the physician she will one day become if everything goes according to plan. It all happened in a whirl and she feels dizzy.

Minutes after her mother's been calmed down Shizuka is still leaning on the wall, pursing her lips together as if that's where the tears would come from, and then there's a hand on her shoulder and a shadow cast on the wall right next to her tense silhouette.

"_Shizuka_? Shizuka Kawai?"

She turns around, startled, and the hand withdraws like a bird on a branch hearing gunfire.

Malik Ishtar is there, thin and lean and impossibly meek looking, blemishes on his forehead and impossibly pale lavender eyes staring right back at her. The shiny wrappers crinkles in her hand, reminding herself that she is holding _chocolates_ of all things, and remembers that this might be what happened to Isis last time she saw her. Maybe she'd just had some kind of fight with her brother.

So she doesn't let her guard down.

"Hello," she risks, like a cat testing a new surface with its paw.

"I was going to ask if you remembered me but you probably do, don't you," he says with a reserve that feels earnest.

"...Yes."

She sees, from the corner of her eye, a nurse eyeing the pair, alert and ready to pounce if the blond marvel is perceived as harassing. But Shizuka can handle it on her own, the harmless bundle of guilt standing at attention before her.

"Let's go somewhere else to chat."

"Let's not go to my room," he nearly cuts, and Shizuka keeps her feature placid as if to mask an internal frown - he made it sound like there was some implication there, and gosh that is so not how Shizuka sees herself at the moment, that prospect hadn't even crossed her mind.

"Okay."

They walk idly like one of those erratic mumblers, the monotonous noise of Malik's scuff slippers serving as an overture to what is undoubtedly to be an awkward conversation.

"That was my mom," she suddenly explains.

"Oh."

Then: "I figured."

She nods with a small 'um'.

They are drawn to the old piano. She runs her fingers idly along the painted wood of the key cover.

Malik deflated any kind of musical hope she might have had. "It's locked."

Another 'um'.

Shizuka sits at the rectangular bench and sets the chocolates next to her.

As if it was the natural gesture to make, Malik places the chocolates on the piano and settles next to her, twisting away from her slightly so that they both wouldn't feel like they're in each other's personal space too much.

He sees Shizuka raise her eyebrows, and shrugs with a weak smile. "I haven't spoken to anyone in weeks," he admits.

"I saw your sister the other day. On her way out," adds Shizuka, realizing that had sounded a little stalk-ish. "I didn't know you were still in town."

"Yeah, well, with everything going on in Egypt and all..." He trails off, unconvinced. But she somehow gets what he wanted to say.

"It wouldn't be the same. Going back."

He simply looks at her, lips parting slightly.

She takes in the beige spots on his tan skin, reminding herself the skin condition might be unrelated to his 'current condition'. She doesn't want to have a reason to pity him. The creases on her forehead wash away and her lips harden into a tight line.

"What happened," she demands, her voice oddly soft.

Malik's hands and forearms slip in the space between his thighs. His ribs glisten under the satin fabric draped on his back when he exhales loudly.

Another inhale, for courage.

Shizuka doesn't need to hear it anymore. They both know what she wanted him to say, and she feels selfish for it. She can only imagine what is traversing his features beyond the blond curtain framing each side of his face.

"I couldn't hold it in. I let it grow and then I couldn't take it anymore. So I broke like waters to be reborn again, except that I ended up here instead, I'm _stuck_." Then a murmur. "Dead wood."

Her mother had framed her own ailments in very different terms.

"That's very poetic."

Not to mention, _opaque_. But somehow Shizuka understood him perfectly.

"But that's not even a good metaphor. I can't become someone else. People don't _change_, Shizuka-"

Their eyes meet and Shizuka builds up some confidence, backed up by a good deal of insightful thinking-

"People can be... altered? People can disappear," she hints, and that sends horror splashing across his features, light tremors running through his lower lip.

"Disappear," he echoes, facing away again.

_Technically that should be a good thing. For you. _

His chuckle tastes like the rind of limes and grapefruits.

She glues her eyes to the shiny plastic and ribbons because right now she can't believe she is having that conversation. _Ba-thump_.

He looks down at his hands like he would fish in a pond. "Did you ever- did you ever feel like, you were somewhere, alone... and you knew that the world kept spinning just fine without you?"

Memories of being blind and bedridden emerge. She wants to say yes, but that would be a lie because these aren't lonely memories. They are filled with Honda's voice, and the firm belief that her brother was out there doing what he did _because of her_.

So no, it would be unfair to admit to herself that she felt useless. Helpless, maybe.

"You have your sister," she offers gently.

"Hah," the surge of self-derision swells and bursts in his throat, choking him. "I only get in her way," he retorts to himself. "I'm no good."

Shizuka starts devising a theory of why the blond is here, and narrows her eyes, unable to snatch anymore hints from his sullen expression.

.

.

.


End file.
